Category: Events

Voices of Conscience, Trenchcoats for Goalposts & All Our Stroud Yesterdays

Announcing three new events this November and two more this December:

Saturday 12th November 7.30 pm £12
TRENCHCOATS FOR GOALPOSTS
Prince Michael Hall, The Bacon Theatre, Hatherley Road, Cheltenham

Friday 11 – Sunday 13 November
ECHO CHAMBER – VOICES OF CONSCIENCE
The Old Town Hall, Shambles £1 all profits to Stroud Refugee Aid

Wednesday 16th November
ALL OUR STROUD YESTERDAYS
9 pm Subscription Rooms £5/£4

Friday 9th December 8:00 pm £10
TRENCHCOATS FOR GOALPOSTS
Painswick Centre, Painswick

Saturday 10th December 8:00 pm £10
TRENCHCOATS FOR GOALPOSTS
Comrades Club, Nailsworth

Trechcoats for Goalposts Poster
All our yesterdays Poster
Echo Chamber Logo

Announcing three new events this November and two more this December:

Saturday 12th November 7.30 pm £12
TRENCHCOATS FOR GOALPOSTS
Prince Michael Hall, The Bacon Theatre, Hatherley Road, Cheltenham

Be transported in theatre, spoken word, live music and song to No Man’s Land in a moving and funny re-creation of the 1914 Christmas Truce. Inspired by local stories and memories, two brave Cheltenham Town FC players set off from Cheltenham for the front line. A compelling 90 minute show.

Friday 11 – Sunday 13 November
ECHO CHAMBER – VOICES OF CONSCIENCE
The Old Town Hall, Shambles £1 all profits to Stroud Refugee Aid

A sound and photography exhibition marking 100 years of conscientious objection.
Quakers have a long history of opposing war and when conscription was introduced in Britain during World War One, many chose to conscientiously object to joining the armed forces. For some this meant rejecting any form of participation and they were imprisoned and sentenced to death for their refusal (later commuted). Others took up alternative forms of service, providing relief from suffering at the front. There were over 16,000 registered conscientious objectors (Cos) during World War One. People objected on different grounds. This exhibition is inspired by their stories.
Opening times: Fri 11th 2pm to 7.30 pm
Sat 12th 10 to 6pm
Sun 13th 10 to 5pm

On Saturday 12th November at the Echo Chamber (11am, 12pm and 2pm), Rachel Simpson and Stuart Butler will give readings from ‘Dorothy and Archibald’, a folding publication, with illustrations, produced to coincide with this year’s Stroud Book Festival. Designed and illustrated by Katie Johnston, an RCA graduate from Nailsworth, this collaborative book features texts by Stuart and Alice Butler, on the mutual suicide of Private Archibald Knee and Dorothy Beard in 1916, at Iron Mills Pond, near Avening.
Copies of the limited edition publication will be available for purchase. Hope to see you there!
£3 a copy; 2 for £5

In this year of the centenary of the Battle of the Somme and its shocking futility, it’s salutary to hear the thoughts of conscientious objectors – religious, socialist, communist, pacifist et al. Dorothy Beard and Archibald Knee, too. And the Old Town Hall in the Shambles is a perfect setting; but take a few moments to visit the railway station, Cheapside and Rowcroft first:

When wounded soldiers arrived at Stroud, ‘There was the usual uncertainty as to which railway station they would arrive at, and consequently the crowds were thickest at the top of Rowcroft, where the roads from the two stations meet. Here people lined the streets six or eight deep, and there was only a narrow way left for the passage of motor-cars and carriages, which had been kindly lent by residents to convey the wounded to hospital…’

Two years later:
‘The Somme pictures proved to be the greatest cinema attraction ever presented to the public of the Stroud district, and we congratulate the management of the Empire Theatre on securing the wonderful film for their patrons…The pictures gave us some little conception of the tremendous amount of energy expended in this one theatre of the war. They gave us, too, some faint inkling of the immense and tragic waste of war: the blasted land, the material wreckage, the broken men and the irrecoverable lives. Their effect was saddening and at the same time inspiring…The half-demented German prisoners aroused sentiments not of derision but of pity…But the dominant impression was that of the bouyancy of our own incomparable men. Surely in all the tragic history of war a more light-hearted, high-spirited and fearless army has never marched into the zone of death and pain? The incalculable debt we owe to these heroes can never be liquidated: for all time the race will be their debtor. No words could record so convincingly as these pictures of actual war scenes the splendid spirit of Britain’s fighting men.’

If you want to find the old battalion,
I know where they are, I know where they are, I know where they are
If you want to find the old battalion, I know where they are,
They’re hanging on the old barbed wire,
I’ve seen ’em, I’ve seen ’em, hanging on the old barbed wire.
I’ve seen ’em, I’ve seen ’em, hanging on the old barbed wire.

Conscientious Objectors and WW1: A few facts

1. NUMBERS: Conscription was introduced in 1916 and, with a numerical symmetry, there were about 16,000 conscientious objectors in this country by the end of the war.
2. NUMBERS: Over 2,000 tribunals sat in judgment on men, deciding on their sincerity over conscientious objection. Members of the tribunals saw their role more to intimidate men into the armed forces rather than grant a fair hearing. But as Ann Kramer puts it in her book Conchies: Conscientious Objectors of the First World War: ‘After all, as many objectors commented; how does a man prove he has a conscience?’
3. NUMBERS: Tribunals could make 4 choices: absolute exemption; an alternative to military service; rule that an individual could take a non-combatant role within the army; reject the application totally and order combatant duties.
4. RESISTANCE: Conscientious objectors carried on resistance, however, in the face of tribunal decisions. For example: refusing medical examinations; refusing to wear uniforms; refusing to march; refusing to salute or stand up.
5. RESPONSES: Responses included the following: polite persuasion; forcible wearing of uniforms; wearing of straitjackets; exposure to extreme cold or heat; solitary confinement; prison; beatings up; field punishments, and then, in the weeks before the Battle of the Somme in 1916, 50 men were secretly transported to France to receive death sentences.
6. DEATH SENTENCES: The death sentences were announced to the men in groups – and then after a few seconds pause, the officer would announce that the death sentence was commuted to ten years’ imprisonment with hard labour.
7. PRISON: Over 6,000 conscientious objectors received prison sentences: ‘Funny. You’re in for murder and I’m in here for refusing to.’
8. ABSOLUTISTS AND ALTERNATIVISTS: ‘Absolutists’ were not prepared to accept any military role, but ‘alternativists’ accepted ‘work of national importance’, such as working on the land, within hospital services, and so on. These numbered about 6,500.
9. AFTER THE WAR: The end of the war saw a variety of forms of victimisation, including the withdrawal of the right to vote for five years.

Wednesday 16th November
ALL OUR STROUD YESTERDAYS
9 pm Subscription Rooms £5/£4

Stroud Football Poets’ 20th anniversary celebration with Crispin Thomas, Stuart Butler, Dennis Gould, John Bassett & Jeff the Fuse. Expect reflections on all that makes his town so creative and vibrant in verse, drama and song. Featuring poems on Stroud and more with extracts from the Poets’ most recent acclaimed on-going production Trenchcoats for Goalposts (Christmas Truce 1914). Expect the unexpected! Unmissable!
And with extracts from the melancholy story of the joint suicide of Dorothy Beard and Private Archibald Knee at Avening in 1916, with Eve Biard as Dorothy.

Friday 9th December 8:00 pm £10
TRENCHCOATS FOR GOALPOSTS
Painswick Centre, Painswick

Saturday 10th December 8:00 pm £10
TRENCHCOATS FOR GOALPOSTS
Comrades Club, Nailsworth

Be transported in theatre, spoken word, live music and song to No Man’s Land in a moving and funny re-creation of the 1914 Christmas Truce. Inspired by local stories and memories, two brave Forest Green players set off from Nailswoth for the front line. A compelling 90 minute show.

Hidden Stroud Walks

Announcing two new walks in collaboration with the Hidden Stroud project this weekend:

Stroud History Reimagined

The walk will reimagine the history of Stroud, touching upon springs, streams and weavers; radical canal history, Stroud Scarlet, slavery and the Black Atlantic.

A walk for anyone interested in walking, history, literature and an imaginative blurring of genres.

http://www.subscriptionrooms.org.uk/whats-on/stroud-history-reimagined-with-stuart-butler/

https://www.facebook.com/events/340825872919858/

For ages 14+
08 October 2016
Start times: 10:00-13:00
Tickets: £2 donation on the day
Box office: 01453 760900

A History of Radical Stroud

A performative walk from the front of the Subscription Rooms, up to Rodborough Common along the Frome, re-imagining the history of Stroud by looking at the Captain Swing Riots in Gloucestershire; Chartism in Stroud and the Five Valleys; the relevance of John Clare to our landscape and history, and then down to The Prince Albert.

A walk for anyone interested in walking, history, literature and an imaginative blurring of genres.

http://www.subscriptionrooms.org.uk/whats-on/a-history-of-radical-stroud-with-stuart-butler/

https://www.facebook.com/events/1770295653243313/

For ages 14+
08 October 2016
Start times: 14:30-16:30
Tickets: £2 donation on the day
Box office: 01453 760900

Announcing two new walks in collaboration with the Hidden Stroud project this weekend:

Stroud History Reimagined

The walk will reimagine the history of Stroud, touching upon springs, streams and weavers; radical canal history, Stroud Scarlet, slavery and the Black Atlantic.

A walk for anyone interested in walking, history, literature and an imaginative blurring of genres.

http://www.subscriptionrooms.org.uk/whats-on/stroud-history-reimagined-with-stuart-butler/

https://www.facebook.com/events/340825872919858/

For ages 14+
08 October 2016
Start times: 10:00-13:00
Tickets: £2 donation on the day
Box office: 01453 760900

A History of Radical Stroud

A performative walk from the front of the Subscription Rooms, up to Rodborough Common along the Frome, re-imagining the history of Stroud by looking at the Captain Swing Riots in Gloucestershire; Chartism in Stroud and the Five Valleys; the relevance of John Clare to our landscape and history, and then down to The Prince Albert.

A walk for anyone interested in walking, history, literature and an imaginative blurring of genres.

http://www.subscriptionrooms.org.uk/whats-on/a-history-of-radical-stroud-with-stuart-butler/

https://www.facebook.com/events/1770295653243313/

For ages 14+
08 October 2016
Start times: 14:30-16:30
Tickets: £2 donation on the day
Box office: 01453 760900

Trains and Boats and Games

I was due to meet Andy at Temple Meads:
He was coming on the train from Yate,
I was coming from Stroud via Swindon
(I wanted to call in at the Radical Book Fair,
To collect a pamphlet on smuggling),
But the signals were down at Parkway,
So I sat on a bench outside Temple Meads,
Listening to a man talk of seeing the debuts
Of Colin Bell and Wynn Davies,
While I ate a cheese and onion pasty,
Awaiting Andy,
When another man sat next to me,
Opened a map and asked:
”Do you know Bristol?’
I thought – correctly – that he might be a Derby fan,
So asked him if he fancied going to the match by boat,
Just as Andy texted:
Train cancelled, he’d have to drive,
So he’d meet me at the ground with my ticket.

My new, substitute Rams mate introduced himself,
Shook my hand: ‘Peter’; ‘Stuart,’ I replied,
Explaining that I wasn’t local, but a Swindon fan –
‘We’ve got something in common then,’
‘Dave Mackay,’ I replied.

It was going well.

We talked of Derby pubs:
The Brunswick, the Alexandra, the Peacock,
And how I’d never been to a match by water before –
Peter has previous, however:
‘When I watch a match at Derby,
I have a couple of pints in the Peacock,
Then walk along the River Derwent,
So that’s going to a match by water, I suppose.’

This sounded all a bit Arnold Bennett to me,
Transposed from the Potteries to the Peacock,
And I drifted away:

‘Around the field was a wide border of … hats … pale faces, rising in tiers, and beyond this border, fences, hoardings, chimneys, furnaces, gasometers, telegraph-poles, houses and dead trees.’

I thought of Arkwright, Cromford, the Derwent, and Bennett,
Until Peter asked me about Stroud, and Slad,
And, reverie over,
We spoke of Laurie Lee, the Woolpack, Clough, Taylor,
Forest, Mackay, Robertson, the European Cup Final,
Our banner referencing George Orwell at Real Madrid:
‘Homage to Clough n Taylor’,
And my letter to Brian Moore,
Asking if the cameras could focus on our pennant,
And his reply, written in fountain pen,
‘What a night in Madrid, Stuart!
Hope you got the message over,
Best wishes, Brian.’

Peter Quinn, for it was he, then talked of his book:
A Ram’s Fan’s Fanfayre,
With chapter headings,
All starting with the prefix ‘For’:
‘Fortune, Forgettable, and so on,’
Conversing as the ferry made its way through the docks.
Until we alighted, asked the way of some Bristol fans,
And I left Peter in safe company at a cider- house,
The suitably named ‘Orchard.’

The build up to the game was great –
Peter and the ferry,
Andy with my ticket, driving befuddled through Bristol,
Eventually meeting me at Ashton Gate,
Then meeting his B.C.F.C. mate, Lee,
Who took us for a tour of the ground …

Then the constant singing of the beer swilled Derby fans,
‘Forest are losing, Forest are losing,
‘We are Derby, Super-Derby, Super-Derby, Super Rams’,
‘Derby Army’, ‘Derby Army’, ‘Derby Army’,
The man in the fancy dress outfit: ‘Sheep on Tour’,
Hearing the half times: Swindon, two nil down,
Meeting my BCFC brother in law, Trevor, after the game,
With Bruce, my wife’s cousin, over from Canada,
Meeting my charming, new grand-nephew, Rupert,
For the first time …

The match was a slightly tedious one all draw,
With countless throw-ins, a general air of ineptitude,
And if it wasn’t for the Rams fans,
Funereal.

But the build up, and the aftermath,
The meeting of friends old and new,
Peter the Ram,
Andy the Ram.
Lee the Robin,
Bristol supporters on the ferry,
Bristol supporters at the Orchard,
Bruce, political reporter for the Toronto Star,
The greeting of a new baby,
A fourth generation Bristol City fan:
Rupert the Robin,

All mean that the day, and hence the match, too,
Have to be filed under the chapter heading:
‘Unforgettable’,
Because sometimes a football match
Is only incidental to the enjoyment of a football match –
It’s what happens before and afterwards that count:
Trains and Boats not Games.

The Weavers and Workhouse Walk

Also see Angela’s website by clicking here!

Well, that was a walk, that was, and even though it’s over, it’s hard to let it go.

Well over one hundred people gathered in the Ale House in Stroud for the stroll through Stroud up to the cemetery, and then other people, attracted by our purpose, joined us as we made our way through town. It was a most – literally – moving sight, to witness such a number of people making their orderly way along Nelson Street and up Bisley Road. It must be a long time since those streets saw such a scene: a scene of gentle, studied pilgrimage.

I was feeling a little nervous as the clock approached four, our starting time. I expected twenty people, but was beginning to wonder that we might have fifty; Angela Findlay, my co-presenter thought seven would turn up, with the threat of rain; I then began to witness an almost biblical sight as more and more and more and yet more walkers, visitors to the town, artists, notables and historians relentlessly surged into the front bar, like some epic flood.

We met in the Ale House not just because of the excellent beer festival, but also because a key text for our walk lies upon the wall in the front bar: a commemorative 1842 plaque praising the beneficence of the workhouse overseers. I contextualized this with an introduction about Chartism locally and nationally; Angela contextualized this with a prologue about the relationship between Stroud’s workhouse and the cemetery.

Next, some performance: I read a poem about the paupers’ graves; Gemma Dunn, visiting from London, read a first person account of the May 1839 Chartist mass-meeting on Selsley Hill, and Tim Johnston from Historic England read a 1795 anonymous threatening letter from Uley.

It was hot and humid and full to the gunnels, and after each speaker had alighted from their stool in the thronged room, our troupe made its way to Nelson Street. It looked almost Pied Piper-like – but this was a collective walk that broke down the barriers between guide, performer and audience: the line of walkers seemingly had its own collective mind, as well as both a conscious and unconscious sense of direction.

I came up the rear – and joined the orderly assembly by the Black Boy clock. The little triangle of land, opposite, with its overhanging tree, provided a natural stage and here we discoursed on General Wolfe, Stroud Scarlet, rioting weavers, Gloucestershire slave owners, local parish registers, the Black Atlantic, the black boy clock, and counter-memorialization. Janet Biard read a first person account from the 1825 riots; Chris William spoke of forty years ago when the Black Boy flats were the teachers’ centre – one of his tasks was to wind up the clock every three days; John Marjoram spoke of his time with the clock, too; Trish Butler gave each walker a copy of a Stroud Scarlet poem, in the spirit of active counter-heritage.

I found this utterly moving: the sun was shining, we were reclaiming the streets – we had to make way for one car only in the half an hour we were there in Castle Street – and such a open air meeting was a compelling medium for a discussion on 18th century history: entirely in the spirit of the subject matter in a lah di dah self-referential post-modernist sort of way. There was also talk of psycho-geography and mythogeography, but time marches on and we needed to walk up Bisley Road to the cemetery.

A long line of walkers made its sentient, serpentine way along the pavements: this was an absolute spectacle in itself, and to witness one hundred people making their studied way up the steep incline of Bisley Road is something I will never forget. It’s hard to find a parallel or simile for such a sight – there probably isn’t one. It was a unique and ineffable experience. Thanks to Stroud Fringe for making it happen.

Angela addressed us from the front of her house; she spoke of its history as the Cemetery Gate Lodge, former home to the Cemetery Superintendents, and the symbolism of the sculptures in the cemetery, before before leading us to the chapel, where she spoke to us from the back of a waiting and handily placed open van. She spoke of the ecumenical nature of the internments and Pauline Stevens informed the crowd of the comprehensive research available on the Stroud Local History website. Other members of the audience added their thoughts too, in the spirit of this shared experience. Angela spoke of her work on memorialization and counter-memorialization.

It was now time to move to the area of the paupers’ graves. The audience was visibly moved by Angela’s recitation of her research and previous art installations, counter memorials to those long forgotten by history. A litany of the occupations of the buried indigent inmates of the workhouse, gleaned from the Death Records and revealing Stroud’s industrious past, plus details of the rudimentary nature of their graves, left an almost tangible, numinous atmosphere in the leafy, shadowed gloom of the graveyard. A fellow walker later told me that he was moved to tears by Angela’s gentle evocation within such a mute yet haunting landscape. I know from other later conversations that he was not alone.

Jim Pentney concluded with a few words about our Allen Davenport Chartist pilgrimage along the banks of the River Thames. Jim held aloft the stone he has carved from Allen’s birthplace at Ewen; we are taking this to the Reformers’ Memorial at Kensal Green, where Allen’s name appears. Finally, in the spirit of the shared collective experience of our walks and explorations, Jim said that all are welcome to join our Thames side ambles to London; information will appear on this website.

Some of us then retired to the Crown and Sceptre for some excellent and varied beer, where Angela, enthused and overwhelmed by the huge and positive response, thought that we really should put it on again next year. She most definitely has a point: as I first left the Ale House, some visitors who couldn’t get into the bar for the introduction, had already asked me if we could reprise the event.

What a day: well, that was a walk, that was; it’s hard to let it go.

Also see Angela’s website by clicking here!

Radical History Weavers and Workhouse Walk: August 27th 4-6PM

WEAVERS and WORKHOUSE WALK

Saturday August 27th 4 of the afternoone clocke , startinge at Ye Ale House:

INFORM – EDUCATE – ENTERTAIN

Stuart Butler will lead a performative walk through the 18th and 19th centuries, meeting atte Ye ALE House: time for a 4pm drink and a chat about Chartism and the workhouse at the top of town. Then a walk thence, via a history of riots, anonymous letters, mass meetings, strikes, slave owners and the Black Atlantic.

The tour will then reach the cemetery where Angela Findlay, resident of the Cemetery Gate Lodge and artist of the 2009 installations Re-dressing Absence, will lead a stroll around the cemetery to reveal the history of the workhouse and the paupers’ graves.

Visit Angela’s Website by clicking here.

The walk will finish by 6pm, leaving you lots of time for getting ready to go out again.

WEAVERS and WORKHOUSE WALK Saturday August 27th 4 of the afternoone clocke , startinge at Ye Ale House
Weavers and Workhouse Walk
Weavers and Workhouse Walk
Weavers and Workhouse Walk
Weavers and Workhouse Walk
Weavers and Workhouse Walk
Weavers and Workhouse Walk

WEAVERS and WORKHOUSE WALK

Saturday August 27th 4 of the afternoone clocke , startinge at Ye Ale House:

INFORM – EDUCATE – ENTERTAIN

Stuart Butler will lead a performative walk through the 18th and 19th centuries, meeting atte Ye ALE House: time for a 4pm drink and a chat about Chartism and the workhouse at the top of town. Then a walk thence, via a history of riots, anonymous letters, mass meetings, strikes, slave owners and the Black Atlantic.

The tour will then reach the cemetery where Angela Findlay, resident of the Cemetery Gate Lodge and artist of the 2009 installations Re-dressing Absence, will lead a stroll around the cemetery to reveal the history of the workhouse and the paupers’ graves.

Visit Angela’s Website by clicking here.

The walk will finish by 6pm, leaving you lots of time for getting ready to go out again.

WEAVERS and WORKHOUSE WALK Saturday August 27th 4 of the afternoone clocke , startinge at Ye Ale HouseWEAVERS and WORKHOUSE WALK Saturday August 27th 4 of the afternoone clocke , startinge at Ye Ale House

Find Another Bath Project and Walk

A message from Richard White:

Greetings Walkers and Supporters.
A first Sunday walkout for August!
Hope you can join me on foot or online.
Sunday 7 August 10.00
Meet outside 44 AD Gallery, 4 Abbey St, Bath BA1 1NN
http://www.walknowtracks.co.uk/walks.html
A photo walk as a contribution to the Find Another Bath project. I want to gather images of the plaqued and unplaqued homes, visitors and residents of Bath, with a special interest in exploring the legacies of slave ownership. Part of the walk will take place along the National Trust’s Walk to the View and I hope we will find and share other views as we go.
Much of the walk will be in the City but we will finish in the fields overlooking the Abbey and the view west. The walk goes ahead regardless of the weather , I’ll do a second email shot nearer the date.
I am very keen to discuss with you a cycle of walks based on this past few months work and building on the fringe walks. The walk on Sunday will be a contribution to the Find Another Bath project and I really hope that together we can capture images and sounds for future exhibition. When we start asking questions about the obscured heritage of Bath, thinking the difficult thoughts of legacy, where does it take us? In the hurly burly summer season city can we find another Bath. Is it hiding in plain sight?
Maybe on Sunday 7 August we will capture a few glimpses of that other Bath.
Please join me on foot or online! Let me know if you can be there and do share this widely.
best wishes
Richard

—
Richard White
mob: 07717012790
tw: @walknowlive
web: www.walknowtracks.co.uk

My Memories of July 30th, 1966

Summer holidays were long then:
Eight weeks,
And by the end of July,
We’d run out of money and run out of fags,
And that was the big talking point:
We had no fags for the match,
No fags,
No Embassy, no Number Six, no Gold Leaf.

I told my mates of my dad’s jungle Chindit trick
(I’d read it in Safer than A Known Way,
About a soldier escaping back to British lines in Burma),
Smoking fags made out of tea leaves and bog roll,
And things were that desperate,
What with nerves and all,
That my mates thought it a good idea;
We gave it a go,

The fags were a fiasco,
But you look on the bright side when you singe your eye brows,
And even though we burnt our noses in the flames,
Mickey Hamm said that at least it got rid
Of the smell of my old Mice and Men dog, Chum.

We stared forlorn at the burnt Typhoo – Hornimans mix,
And the charred fragments of Delsey and Sellotape,
We had one last hope:
Extra time.
Dad took a last fag from his packet of Senior Service –
We hoped he might give us a drag,
Especially if we stared at him all the way through the tab;
He smoked slowly and obliviously and he smoked the lot,
And then stubbed the dog-end out in the ash tray.
We thought it was all over,
It was now.

John Keats and Bobby Moore and the Likely Lads and Jean Baudrillard at the Crown and Sceptre

John Keats and Bobby Moore and the Likely Lads and Jean Baudrillard at the Crown and Sceptre
John Keats and Bobby Moore and the Likely Lads and Jean Baudrillard at the Crown and Sceptre

Buddleia in broad gauge bloom down on Stroud station,
Crazy golf flags out at the Brunel Goods Shed,
As I lazily read the Stroud News on the train to London,
Until I came across Rodda Thomas of Crown and Sceptre fame:
‘’ The whole game, in real time, kicking off at 3pm on Saturday,
exactly 50 years to the minute since the real game kicked off …
We will also pretend not to know the final score and it will be only 10 shillings
(50 p in new money) a ticket too.”
This struck me as a sort of post-modernist collision with the Likely Lads:
The No Hiding Place episode when they try to avoid finding out
The score of an England game before watching the highlights on TV …
But now with the clever conceit of a pub post-modernist TV twist …
This time we actually know the score but pretend we don’t …
Not so much a suspension of disbelief as a suspension of knowledge …
I suppose that’s why Chris Farlowe was number one on the day:
‘Out of Time’, July 30th 1966.

The train trundled on to Swindon and more Stroud news from 1966,
Real, this time, no pretending:
The Cainscross and Ebley Co-op bread vans were being withdrawn,
Losing money, shopping habits changing, supermarkets …
Mr. and Mrs. Staines, directors of Taylor Bros Ltd since the war,
Were retiring and so the 70 year firm in Gloucester Street was to close:
The newspaper said it
‘Had served generations of cycling schoolboys
and vehicle owners in its 70-year history.’

There was no mention of where cycling schoolgirls might go.

By Didcot, I was on to the Guardian, to discover another World Cup tale:
The blue plaque unveiling at Bobby Moore’s childhood Barking home –
His daughter, Roberta, said:
“This is where it all began – kicking a ball out here in the street
with his friends before embarking on an incredible journey
which we all know led him up the steps to collect the World Cup
from the Queen at Wembley 50 years ago this week.’
By now, I really was beginning to think that everything really is all interlinked,
In a cosmic hyper-reality Alice through the Looking Glass sort of way,
Obvs,
Especially when we got to Reading,
Where I was now on the Guardian G2, and serendipitously reading
About John Keats’ ‘negative capability’, or, as Stuart Jefferies put it:
Humanity ‘is capable of being in uncertain systematic doubt,
without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.’

Which is just what we’ll be doing up at the Crown and Sceptre, I suppose,
In a sort of post-modernist, knowingly ironic self-referential way,
Where John Keats meets Bobby Moore meets the Likely Lads
Meets Jean Baudrillard sort of thing,
(Blimey! There goes Battle of Britain class, Lord Dowding,
34052 in steam at Southall – perhaps it is 1966.),
And it was all very well for Baudrillard to say:
“Power is only to willing to allow football
a diabolical responsibility for stupefying the masses”,
And I daresay I might agree with that some times,
But I’ll see you up the pub on Saturday,

For once, I really can’t see us losing.
Can you?
Might go to extra time though.

Rodborough Gardens Sculpture Trail: A Day in a post-Brexit Life

Rodborough Sculpture Garden Trail

It was strange returning to the Old Endowed School,
Where just three days before we had voted
In the referendum;
Members of the Rodborough branch
Of the People’s Republic of Stroud
Gathered in Church Place,
Sharing their sense of vote-shock,
Over soup, tea and cake,
Beneath the red, white and blue bunting;
Trench cake too, for the forthcoming
Churchyard Somme centenary;

But life goes on –

‘How many kinds of sweet flowers grow
in an English country garden?
I’ll tell you now of some that I know and those I miss,
you’ll surely pardon.’

Seven gardens were open to the public,
With sixteen artists exhibiting;
Families walking past
A quaint hand painted wooden sign:
‘GARDENS AND SCULPTURE TRAIL’,
With an arrow pointing left,
The necessary word, ‘TICKETS’,
Only just squeezing into its allocated space;
A greenhouse from the 1920s,
With bakelite attachments
For modernist electricity;
No. 2 Church Place;
Clinton House, Church Place;
Highcroft, Church Place;
Derrigar, Walkley Hill;
Steepways, Walkley Hill;
Glebe House, Walkley Hill;
Champagne at Rodborough Court from Omnitrack,
The sponsors of the occasion,
With displays and pictures artfully showing the gardens
In their Victorian and Edwardian heyday,

Before Arthur Lancelot Apperly, son of Sir Alfred and Lady Apperly of Rodborough Court, marched off to war, to be killed in action in 1916.
We returned to the Old Endowed School,
Once a chantry house,
Where masses were sung for the souls of the dead,
Seven hundred years ago –
It’s hard now to glimpse the shadows of sheep herds,
Or watch the wool on Cotswold packhorse routes,
En route to river, sea and then Flanders;
It’s hard to hear Rodborough’s coins jingling
In treasure chests sent south to Southampton,
For Rodborough’s feudal lord, the Abbey of Caen
(The chantry by now a secular store for
Mammon and the best Rodborough wool) –
France and England entwined,
Yet rent apart with the 100 Years’ War.

Two centuries later, the Tudor Reformation closed down
The chantries, abbeys and monasteries,
And the chantry building would become a parish workhouse;
Then a charitable school, then a state school,
Then a welcome village hall in the Great War,
Then a social club and place to pay your rates
In those Radio Times
Great Depression times
Between the wars –

And today, a place where people meet
(A quintessentially – seemingly – English occasion),
Trying to ignore the aftermath of the referendum,
A rus in urbe sequestered parish.

But the bright dawn didn’t last:
It always rains on Sundays:
Gurney’s Somme and the Severn are still conjoined.

(Artists exhibiting: Lucy Birtles, Ann-Magreth Bohl, Danny Evans, Julie Fowler, Kim Francis, Paul Grellier, Helen Lomberg, Hannah Mathison, Amanda Moriarty, Jim Pentney, Marion Mitchell, Dave King, Darren Rumley, Rebecca Simmons, Ian Rank-Broadley and Josef Kaspar)
(Jim included work on Gurney)

Money raised for:
Stroud Women’s Refuge;
Stroud Valleys Project;
The Old Endowed School.

Swapping Shirts with Shakespeare: Dover versus Forest Green

Enter Edgar, King Lear, Jon Parkin, Ye Beast, Dale Vince as Duke of Frocester, Scotty Bartlett and various morris dancers as footballers
Scene ; The white cliffs of Dover

‘Come on, sir; here’s the place: stand still. How fearful
And dizzy ’tis, to cast one’s eyes so low!
The footballs high that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as the Beast: half way down
Hangs one that goal-hanger lurks, dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
The football men, that walk upon the beach,
Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring Beast,
Diminish’d to a speck; a speck, a Beast
Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge,
That on the unnumber’d idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high. I’ll look no more;
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.
But wait anon! The Beast doth soar high yet –
He crashes the ball high in the Dover net.
My Lord! Come thee hence to scry this wondrous scene.

A late winner methinks for the lads of Forest Green.’